A/r/tography: A Metonymic Message I am so surprised that there is a methodology called A/r/tography which presents three roles: the artist, the researcher, and the teacher. The A/r/tography includes self-realization, self-development and the relationship between the self and the outside world, and extends to the reflection on education and teaching as well as personal life through artistic and aesthetic approaches to self-consciousness in education and social phenomena. This methodology does not place emphasis on the identity of the researcher, nor on the artist or the educator, while it focuses on when he/she is the researcher, or the artist, or the educator, including the transition between or among them. Moreover, these roles of “A/R/T” are not separate, I think they are united. Artist-researcher-teachers are inhabitants of these borderlands as they re-create, re-search, and re-learn ways of understanding, appreciating, and representing the world (Finley and Knowles 1995). A/r/tography places more emphasis on the close relationship between theory and practice, cognition and art than in previous educational research. Art is not just a means of expressing itself, it is also a way of recognizing and thinking about the world in reality. As the author says, “A/r/tography is a living practice of art, research and teaching: a living message; a life-writing, life-creating experience” (Irwin et al. 2001) Cultivating Potential-Harvesting Wisdom: An A/r/tographical Illumination of Mentorship Honesty, I read this paper first without any knowledge of A/r/tography and obviously I was confused about some points in the beginning. Well, after reviewing the methodology of A/r/tography, at least, I figured out that the roles of Dr. Kathy and Amy are artists, researchers, and teachers. Certainly, they were using this methodology to display the illumination of mentorship. It is a very special way to talk about mentorship. As far as I know, mentorship is a relationship between the teacher and the student. However, it is interesting to know how the mentor cultivates the student in a shared artistic process. Dr. Kathy and Amy present a unique way to explore the mentorship by setting up a six week co-creating case, and they documented the whole process of collecting the video data. I enjoyed reading the narrative about the video data which presents how they communicated with each other and how they reflected on the topic which they were exploring. Moreover, I believe that it is the trust that inspired them to engage each other as artists to explore the journey of mentorship. Furthermore, I am willing to use the methodology in future research. I believe that real life is complicated, however, objectivism is inclined to theoretical inquiry, including thefact that knowledge belongs to the objective category. Definitely, it ignores the complexity of the subject itself. Consequently, it blindly pursues the “purity” of knowledge, avoiding the subjectivity of the penetration at all costs. Finally, the researchers and the people who are influenced by this theory are not able to adapt to the realities and complications of real life. That’s why I think that subjectivism and objectivism are interconnected in the classroom on which I reflected upon in Parker Plamer’s paper in Amy’s Reflective teacher course.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |